I have 16GB of storage on my Nexus 4 and found that I was running out of room quickly.
Some things that I have done are:
- Activate the photo backup feature (set it to only backup on wifi so that you don't use your mobile data) which will privately upload your photos to your google account then you can remove them from your phone.
- I had a lot of music stored on my phone. Using Google Play Music, you can upload up to 20,000 songs from your private library to your Play Music service. You can then delete the songs from your phone and still access them via streaming (again, I recommend streaming only on wifi if you have a limited data usage allowance). If you listen to music on the go and don't want to stream over the network, you can "pin" songs/albums/playlists to your phone while on wifi. This will download the music to your phone and when you don't want it on your phone anymore, you simply unpin it.
- By going into the apps section of your settings, you can sort the apps by size (this is the amount of storage each uses on your phone). If you select an app from the apps section of your phone, you can choose to "clear cache" of each app. This will remove any of the temporary data that the app has stored on your phone. If you don't do this on a regular basis, you may find that some apps have more data in the cache then they actual app install has. This will not effect any of your information.
- Removing the extraneous apps that you no longer use can really clear up space and you can always find them in the "my apps" section of the Play Store if you want to redownload any of them (you will not have to repay for paid apps if you do this). When I uninstall an app, I always (1) clear the cache, then (2) clear the data (this will delete all information that you have entered into the app including account information, etc, then (3) turn off notifications (I have had uninstalled apps pop up with a notification before and lastly (4) uninstall the app. These four steps are all done from within the app screen within the app section of your settings. This may not be required, but I like to ensure that an app is completely cleared out when I remove it.
- THIS STEP IS ONLY TO BE COMPLETED IF YOU ARE 100% COMFORTABLE WITH DELETING ALL DATA FROM YOUR PHONE AND IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE "AVERAGE" USER. If I remember correctly, you just completed an OTA update to your OS. When I updated from KitKat to Lollipop, I found my phone to be sluggish. After completing the update, I copied all data that I wanted to keep off of my phone to my computer and then completed a factory reset. I then copied the information back that I needed. If you have synced your google account to your phone and utilize the google apps, items like contacts, etc should be automatically put back on your phone when you resync it. NOTE: THIS STEP RETURNS YOUR PHONE TO THE FACTORY PRESETS AS IF YOU HAD NEVER USED IT BEFORE. ALL DATA IS ERASED AND ALL PREVIOUS SETTINGS ARE NO LONGER REMEMBERED. USE EXTREME CAUTION AND COMPLETE AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Hope this helps!
